


If Only For A Day

by Alchemine



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 02:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14251386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alchemine/pseuds/Alchemine
Summary: Mildred makes it possible for Miss Mould to try her hand at teaching art again.





	If Only For A Day

There are days when Marigold Mould wishes she’d just gone to prison after all. It’s a strange sentiment for a witch who’s always considered herself an unfettered free spirit, but with no magical defences left, she feels exposed and constantly vulnerable, like a snail without its shell. A cell would have been a safe place, and if she’d behaved well, perhaps they’d even have let her have some non-toxic paints to enliven the place. Above all else, a cell in a witching prison would have been suffused with the familiar scent and feel of magic, even if it was other people’s and not her own. It would have felt like home in a way her current accommodation in a dingy tower block, secured for her upon her acquittal by some witching official who handles such situations, most certainly does not.  

On balance, she doesn’t think she’s adapting to life in the ordinary world as well as she’d hoped she would. She’s worked out through trial and error how to use her microwave and electric kettle, but public transport is claustrophobic and stifling compared to broomstick flight, and she nearly had a panic attack at the supermarket last week, standing in front of a display of ready meals and trying to decide whether tuna pasta bake would be better or worse than spaghetti carbonara. At last she’d bought one of each and discovered she didn’t like either. Witches don’t eat such things, and Marigold is still a witch at heart, even without her powers.  

Worst of all is the telephone, which goes off like a siren with no warning and doesn’t even show you the person speaking at the other end. She’s seen them before—Miss Cackle had one in her office, for the rare times when she needed to contact someone outside the witching world—but she’s never used one until now, and she loathes it, especially because the few people who phone her are always trying to sell something. She’s already getting into the habit of simply not answering the phone when it rings, and that’s how, on one long, quiet afternoon, she nearly misses an unexpected call from Mildred Hubble.

“Miss Mould? Is that you?”  

“Mildred?” Marigold is startled, but pleased. “Yes, it’s me. Who told you—how did you know where to reach me?”  

“I asked Miss Cackle, and she found out for me.” Mildred’s high, clear voice sounds as if it’s coming from the moon. “Can you hold the phone a bit closer to your mouth, Miss Mould? It’s hard to hear you.”

“Oh,” Marigold says, and brings the phone’s handset from nearly arm’s length up to her face. “Is that better?”

“Much better, thanks. It’s so good to talk to you again. How have you been?”

Marigold clutches the phone and looks around at her room. She’s been slowly covering the walls with an intricate pastiche of sketches and brightly coloured magazine photos and flattened-out chocolate wrappers and interesting handbills she’s found on the street, but it’s still pretty grim. Still, there’s no need to upset Mildred with that information.

“I’m all right,” she says. “What about you? Shouldn’t you be in a lesson right now? Not that I object—it’s better for you to get out and explore than to be shut up in Miss Hardbroom’s dreary old laboratory all day long—but—”

“Don’t worry,” Mildred says. Marigold hears the smile in her voice and immediately pictures the way Mildred’s nose scrunches up when she smiles, her small uneven teeth and the sparkle of fun in her eyes. It’s not quite the same as seeing her face in a mirror, but it’s not a bad substitute. Perhaps she could get to like the telephone after all, she thinks.

“It’s summer holidays now,” Mildred adds. “I’ve been at home for nearly a week. That’s why I wanted to speak to you. I’ve had an idea.”

“An idea?” Marigold says faintly.

“Yes,” Mildred says. “I think it’s a good one. Can you come and visit me tomorrow? My mum says it’s all right. I’ll tell you how to go.”

The directions aren’t as simple for Marigold to follow as Mildred makes them sound, but she finds her way somehow and arrives at Mildred’s home—a high-rise building much newer and nicer than Marigold’s own—to find Mildred waiting outside on the grass. She’s surrounded by a group of eight smaller children in varying sizes, from a little boy barely past toddlerhood to twin girls only a little younger than the first-years at Cackle’s, and when she sees Marigold she jumps up and runs to greet her with a hug.

“Have you got the supplies?” she asks, and Marigold, rather breathless from the surprise embrace, holds up the paper bag she’s brought along. “Oh, good. I’ve got all my own crayons and pencils as well, and my mum bought some coloured chalks, too. There should be enough for everyone. Are you ready?”

Marigold nods, and Mildred turns and addresses the children.

“This is Miss Mould, my art teacher.”

“I was,” Marigold begins.

“You  _are_ ,” Mildred says firmly, and plunges on without a pause. “She’s going to do art with us today, and it’s going to be lots of fun. Who wants to have fun?”  

There’s an exuberant chorus of “Me! I do!” and Mildred turns back to Marigold with the exact smile that Marigold pictured when they spoke on the telephone.  

“Take it away, Miss Mould,” she says, and Marigold looks at all the expectant faces, clears her throat, and opens the paper bag.

“I think we’ll do collages first,” she says.

It’s a rare, lovely day, with a mostly blue sky dotted here and there with creamy puffs of white cloud, and the children get warm as they run around gathering leaves and twigs and pebbles for their collages. Mildred collects their shed jackets and pullovers and puts them in a pile on a dry patch of grass to be claimed later, and then joins in to make a collage of her own as Marigold wanders from child to child, praising creativity in one, bold colour choices in another.

She’d thought she would feel limited by not being able to use magic, but once she’s begun, she finds she doesn’t need it: these aren’t little witches, and she doesn’t need to impress them, or pretend to be someone she isn’t. They’re happy just to be shown how much paste to use, and when they move on from collages to crayon rubbings, how to apply the right amount of pressure to bring out all the delicate ribs and veins in a leaf. They clamour for her attention, for her approval, for her advice, and she finds herself feeling happy for the first time in weeks, if not months.

When their interest begins to wane, Mildred brings out the chalks, and Marigold sets the whole lot of them to drawing on the pavement, out of the way of foot traffic. They’re putting the finishing touches on their work when Julie Hubble appears, carrying a plastic container full of custard creams and a bag of individual juice cartons, and causing a near-stampede.

“No pushing,” Julie says to the swarm of children, and they settle down at once, recognising a parent’s voice. “Only one each until everyone’s had one. And leave some for Miss Mould and Mildred.”

“Thank you,” Marigold says, and helps herself to a custard cream from the proffered container. She hasn’t seen Julie since the Founding Stone incident, and she feels awkward about it, but the other woman doesn’t seem to notice.  

“Oh, I didn’t mean you when I said only one. Have all you like. Goodness knows you’ve earned it, dealing with these little ruffians all morning.” Julie laughs, a warm easy laugh, and blows curly blonde hair out of her face. “Millie used to try to make them play school, when she still lived at home all the time, but it was like herding cats. They seem to have taken to you, though.”

“Miss Mould’s a real teacher, that’s why,” Mildred says between nibbles of biscuit.

“Not really,” Marigold protests.

“Well, I’m hardly an expert, but it looks that way to me,” Julie says, surveying the chalk drawings and the crayon rubbings and the collages, thick with paste, laid out on the grass to dry. “I think they’ve all learnt a thing or two this morning, don’t you, Mildred?”  

Mildred nods enthusiastically. “There’s one other thing I was hoping to do, but I wanted to ask you if it’s all right first, Miss Mould. I won’t if it bothers you.”

“What is it?” Marigold asks, and Mildred stands on tiptoes and whispers it first in her ear, then in Julie’s.

“I don’t know, Millie love,” Julie says as Mildred pulls back. “What if they tell their parents?”

“If I’d told you something like that, would you have believed me, before you knew about magic?”

“I’d have thought you were imagining things,” Julie admits, and Mildred grins.

“What about you, Miss Mould? Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind,” Marigold says. She hasn’t seen any magic performed in more than six months and doesn’t really know how it might affect her, but she doesn’t want to disappoint Mildred, not after Mildred’s gone to so much trouble to give her a good day.

“It may not even work,” Mildred says, flexing her fingers and facing the nearest chalk drawing, a five-year-old’s rendition of a smiling dog and cat under a sun that is also smiling. “I’ve done this one before, but everything’s easier at school because of the—well, it just is, that’s all. Anyway, here goes.”  

She whispers the words of the spell, not wanting to attract attention if anyone’s walking close enough to overhear, and sends a bolt of magic that Marigold can feel like a buzzing tingle through her entire body. Even Julie seems to be able to sense it a bit, she notes with interest, perhaps because of her witching ancestry. It occurs to her that she and Julie are the same in a way—both born to be witches, but both severed from magic, though Julie doesn’t know what she’s missing by it.

“There,” Mildred says in triumph, just as two or three of the children go “Oooh!” and crowd around the drawing, which has sprung into animated life. The chalk dog frolics about on the chalk grass, yapping silently; the chalk cat washes a chalk paw and turns its face up to the beaming chalk sun.

“Did you do it, Millie?” A little girl in a pink princess T-shirt pulls at Mildred’s arm with a small brown hand. “Is it magic?”

“Shhhh. Yes, but it’s secret magic, just for us,” Mildred says. “If you talk about it too much, it’ll stop working, so don’t tell anyone, OK?”

The girl nods, solemn with understanding, and then the boy next to her says, shyly, “Can you do mine next?”

“No, mine!”

“Do mine, Millie, do mine!”

“I’ll do as many as I can,” Mildred promises. “One at a time, though.” She looks up over the crowd of children’s heads, checking how Marigold has taken the magic, and falters as she sees her former teacher’s face. “Miss Mould…?”

“No, go on,” Marigold tells her, dabbing at tears. “I’m fine. It’s just nice, seeing it again.”

Mildred turns back to her small fan club, and Marigold feels a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“She never forgets that she owes it to you,” Julie says, in a voice pitched low for only the two of them to hear. “It was awfully important to her, having you here today. I’m glad you came.”

“I’m glad too,” Marigold says, and despite the tears, despite everything, she means it. Her magic isn’t really gone after all; she knows that now. It’s still alive in Mildred, and every time Mildred works a spell, from today until the end of what is likely to be a very long life, a little of Marigold will be there.

It’s not the legacy she thought she’d leave behind, but it’s a legacy just the same. And on this summer’s afternoon, she thinks it feels all right.


End file.
